What Are Tourists? Types, Tourist Satisfaction, Other Types Of Tourists

What are Tourists?

A tourist can be defined as a person, who makes a tour or travels away from home for leisure, business, or other purposes for more than one day but less than a year.

Types Of Tourists

Based on their various needs and reasons for traveling, types of tourism into the following categories:

Incentive Tourists

Incentives tourists are those few lucky individuals, who get a holiday package as a reward from his company, for good work or achieving targets, set by the company or for the excellent performance given to the company within of end of the year.

Incentive tourists draw inspiration and strive hard from such tours to work harder, improve work relations and focus on team bonding and give more fruitful results to the company. A person who is awarded with a nice holiday package for accomplishing the target sales of a company is a perfect example of incentive tourist.

Health or Medical Tourist

The worldwide growth in the flow of patients and health professionals, as well as medical technology, capital funding and regulatory regimes across national borders, has given rise to new way of consuming and producing of healthcare services over recent decades.

A significant new element of a growing medical trade in healthcare has involved the maximum movement of patients across borders in the pursuit of medical treatment and health; a phenomenon commonly termed medical tourism.

Medical tourism occurs when consumers select to travel across international destinations with the intention of receiving some form of medical treatment.

Those who need special medical treatment, which is only possible away from home, plans trips to other places and are called Health or medical tourist. Some of these tourists avail medical treatment in other countries, which may be expensive in their own country.

Many health or medical tourists also make trips simply to stay away from home for few days in healthier climate. Most of medical tourist fly to South Africa from oversee countries to undergo plastic surgery.

Education Tourists

Tourists traveling from one place to another particular place in another town, city, or country for further study in order to improve his or her educational qualification are termed, education tourists.

There are also groups of people, who travel to attend workshops or for some training to upgrade skills. A Doctor, who makes a trip to another province to attend a particular workshop, qualifying individuals about infectious diseases is an example of an educational tour.

Adventure Tourists

Adventure tourists look for some unusual or fantastic experience. They seek adventurous activities that may be dangerous, such as rock climbing, river rafting, skydiving, shark cave diving, and bungee jumping. This involves physical activity.

This activity is generally is for recreation. In this generally an age group people participate Eg. School/ College Trip. Adventure tourism is sometimes seasonal.

Cultural Tourist

Cultural tourism is very much a form of urban tourism since many of the attractions and events attended by tourists are in urban areas, often in the downtown cores of our communities.

The development of cultural tourism as to generate income and a recognized form of tourism has emerged as an objective of both heritage institutions and tourist operators across around the world. Challenging economic times have forced museums and heritage sites to explore ways and means so as to increase levels and self-generated revenues and to control operating expenditures by developing tourism.

Cultural tourism Places may be created by understanding the different varieties of travel motivators and personal interests of tourists. Cultural facilities and events may therefore capitalize on opportunities to attract the various people who are not greatly motivated by culture but who have a certain level of interest.

Business Tourist

Tourist traveling for the purpose of business is known as a business tourist. Business tourism is spread worldwide. Hence it is a part of the business world. Most of the cities feature conference centers that cater to the needs of business tourists.

A proper example of a business tourist is a salesman, who makes trips to different places to attend trade shows, to display and promote his own products also. Also, a firm has different branches in different countries.

But today, business tourism is not only limited to sales and purchase but it has various other reasons to travel from one destination to other.

Business tourism includes participation in the following activities:

Association/Charity/Institute/Society Events etc.
Government meetings & conferences / presentation / projects.
Corporate Events – dinners, product launches, conferences, awards / shows etc.
Incentive travel for excellent perfomance.
Corporate hospitality and Corporate Events.
Exhibitions & trade shows.
Independent business travellers.

Conferences, meetings and other business events play a vital role in economic, professional and educational development in different countries by providing important opportunities to communicate, educate, motivate and network.

Medical Tourist

Medical tourist more commonly refers to as patients who are mobile through their own wish and this type of patient mobility is the focus of this report.

Such medical tourists do not make use of their medical rights (where the phenomenon is ordinarily known as cross-border care‘) but choose to pay out-of-pocket, and therefore are better known as consumers rather than as individuals exercising their citizenship rights.

Other Types of Tourists

Following are other types of tourists which given below:

Eco-Tourists

Nature-loving tourists, who love to go green like traveling to Bonita Gardens in Bloemfontein South Africa, or similar destinations are called eco-tourists. They travel throughout the world in search of destinations not affected by pollution or much human intervention.

They are tourists who spend their leisure time in a lonely and calm place which is surrounded by greenery. Such Nature-loving tourists generally prefer jungle resorts or beach resorts as their stay.

Leisure Tourist

These tourists are ge3nerally those who want to rejuvenate and revitalize with comfort, want a break from their routine or sometimes hectic work schedule, hence enjoy a break from the routine of life. Examples of this type of tourism are cruising while vacationing or simply relaxing on a beach.

Religious Tourist

Religious tourist travel to sites of religious significance. World is dotted with a number of religious places such as Hajj in Mecca, Jerusalem in Israel, Varanasi in India, and the Vatican in Rome. During Easter, a huge accumulation of Christian pilgrimage takes place in Zion City.

Sport and Recreation Tourist

As many sports events are conducted at the international level. These types of tourists either take an active part in or just watch sports events. Some of such popular sports events are the Cricket, Soccer World Cup, Wimbledon Tennis Championship, Comrades Marathon, and Fisher River Canoe Marathon.

Backpacking or Youth Tourist

This type of tourist is of young age and they travel with minimum luggage and on limited expenses and budget. But they are very passionate and love excitement and adventures while traveling. They generally have no specific travel schedules and tend to travel independently.

Special Interest Tourist (STI)

These tourists are those who nurture particular passion in different things like bird watching, nature, wildlife, fishing during the Sardine Run, food and wine, or attending the Book Fair.

Tourist Satisfaction

Tourism is a People Industry

Service is created and performed by people (service providers) for people (customer). What makes service outstanding and memorable is a sequence of events participated by a variety of willingly involved and competent personnel.

Effective Customer Service must be customer-driven and customer-focus so that Total Customer Satisfaction must be achieved. Companies in the tourism industry strive to achieve Total Customer Satisfaction as their corporate culture, their primary objective of corporate success because they realize ‘satisfied’ customers are the true asset of the companies.

Despite the capital investments in aircraft, hotels, and attractions, it is the people (the service providers) that make the difference. Customers can choose what kind of products or services they want to have but service providers have no choice of their customers.

Providers are there in meeting all kinds of customers from all walks of life and from all parts of the world. These customers are different in nationalities, genders, ages, lifestyles, cultures, etc.

Effective customer service must be performed not only with ‘smiles’ but more important with ‘sensitivity’. All service providers must be trained to be observant and alert to respond in different situations and to different customers.

The mindset of positive customer relationship is important and to practice, this belief every service provider must develop a positive view towards the customers. In addition, they have to identify their important roles and responsibilities.

Concerns of Tourists

For a number of travelers, safety is their primary concern. Other concerns include health hazards and the crime rate, especially theft at the destination.

Personal Safety

Avoid places where crime rates are high, wars are taking place or where there is threat from terrorists.
Find out the location of fire exits in the hotel one is staying in.

Money and Valuables

Buy traveler’s cheques to reduce the possibility of losing the cash.
Keep the traveler’s cheques, credit cards and cash in separate places.
Put valuables in the hotel safe.
Take good care of one’s travel documents.
Make photocopies of one’s travel documents in case the original is lost.
Keep a list of emergency telephone number.

Health

Find out whether the country one is traveling to is a plague area (whether inoculation is necessary).
Find out the sanitation condition in that country (whether it is necessary to bring drinking water).
Bring one’s personal medication.
Be careful with what to eat and drink. Avoid unclean food and water. Visit the Travel Health Service.

Responsible Tourist

These are the sign of a responsible tourist:

Tourists Code of Behaviour

Tourism involves the movement of large numbers of people from their normal pl aces of residence to new locations. Tourism results in certain impacts on the environment, social, cultural and economy of the host destinations.

Travel in a spirit of humility and with a genuine desire to learn more about the people of the host country.
Be sensitively aware of the feelings of other people, thus preventing what might be offensive behavior on your part. This applies very much to photography.
Cultivate the habit of listening and observing,rather than merely hearing and seeing.
Realise that often the people in the country you visit have time concepts and thought patterns different from your own; this does not make them inferior, only different.
Instead of looking for that “beach paradise”, discover the enrichment of seeing a different way of life, through other eyes.
Acquaint yourself with local customs – people will be happy to help you.
Remember that you are only one of the thousands of tourists visiting this country and do not expect special privileges.

In order to minimize the negative impact of tourism on the host destination and so as to enable tourists to enjoy the originality of the destination, tourists should be aware of the effect of their behavior on the host destination.

Understanding Human Differences

Do not impose your thinking on others. The local community may have a different concept of time, thought pattern, customs, values, and the way they behave may be different from your home country.

It is necessary to understand the taboos and protocols of a destination and to avoid any acts.
That may offend the host community.
Appreciate all aspects of the host destination.
By understanding the indifferences, tourists should appreciate all aspects of the destination including their customs, heritage and environment.
Protect the environment, heritage and be concerned with the feelings of the host community.
Tourists should assist in protecting the physical environment so that the attractiveness of the destination would not be depreciated.
It is necessary to respect the culture of the host community.
The tourists’ own culture is not superior than the others and they should not expect any privileges from them.

When cultural tourism and ecotourism are the major forms of tourism of a destination, the code of behavior of the travelers on culture and environment of the community is very important. For example, the Himalayas in Nepal is a popular trekking destination and a culturally distinct area.

British-Based Organization

Tourism Concern has set up a voluntary code of conduct for tourists as a guideline when they visit the country.

This guideline was launched in 1991 which aims to:

Promote greater understanding of the impact of tourism on host communities and environments.
Raise awareness of the forms of tourism that respect the rights and interests of people living in tourist receiving areas, promoting tourism that is just, sustainable and participatory.
Work for change in current tourism practice such as vast tract of forest depleted in order to fulfil fuel-wood needs and accommodation for tourists. This has resulted in soil erosion and flooding.
To enable tourists and travellers to travel with critical insight and understanding. He guidelines were distributed to all British tour operators carrying visitors to the Himalayas.

Limited Deforestation

Do not set open fires and discourage others from doing so on your behalf. Where water is heated by scarce firewood, use as little as possible. When possible choose accommodation that uses kerosene or fuel effective wood stoves.
Remove litter, burn or bury paper and taking away out all non-degradable litter. Graffiti are permanent examples of environment pollution.
Keep local water clean and avoid using pollutants such as detergents in streams or springs.
If no toilet facilities are available, make sure you are at least 30 metres away from water sources, and bury or cover wastes.
Plants should be left to flourish in their natural environment –taking cuttings, seeds and roots is illegal in many parts of the Himalayas.
Help your guides and porters to follow conservation measures.

Respect Holy Places

Preserve what you have come to see, never touch or remove religious objects. Shoes should be removed when visiting temples.
Do not give to children as it may encourage begging. A donation to a project, health centre or school is a more constructive way to help.
You will be accepted and welcomed if you follow local customs. Use only your right hand for eating and greeting. Do not share cutlery or cups, etc. It is polite to use both hands while giving or receiving gifts.
Respect for local etiquette earns you respect – loose, light-weight clothes are preferable to revealing shorts, skimpy tops and tight fitting action wear. Hand holding or kissing in public are disliked by local people.
Observe standard food and bed charges but do not condone overcharging. Remember that when you’re shopping the bargains you buy may only be possible because of low income to others.
Visitors who value local traditions encourage local pride and maintain local cultures, please help local people gain a realistic view of life in Western Countries.

What are Tourists? Types, Tourist Satisfaction